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AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


BY 


C. ALPHONSO SMITH 


EDGAR ALLAN POE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE 
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 


BOSTON AND LONDON 
GINN AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 
1912 


COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY C. ALPHONSO SMITH 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 


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PREFACE 


The following pages contain one of the lectures 
on American literature delivered at the University of 
Berlin during the author’s incumbency of the Roos- 
~ evelt Professorship from 1910 to 1911. It was pub- 
lished in English in the /zternationale Wochenschrift 
Jiir Kunst und Technik (Berlin, December 17, 1910) 
and forms Chapter XVI in the author’s Amerikant- 
sche Literatur (Berlin, 1912). No changes have been 


made in the text. 
C. ALPHONSO SMITH 


UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 
February 14, 1912 


[ iii J 
2950057 





THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


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AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


A few years ago lectures on American literature 
meant lectures on American authors or on distinctive 
periods in the literary history of America. The unit 
was the individual author or the definitely bounded 
period. To these two methods of approach, however, 
a third has been added: it is the study of literary 
types, especially of prose types. An example is seen 
in Theodore Stanton’s ‘‘ Manual of American Liter- 
ature ’’ (1909), which is the four thousandth volume 
of the Tauchnitz Edition. This, I believe, is the only 
formal history of American literature which not only 
discusses periods and authors but groups the latter 
under such headings as The Historians, The Noyv- 
elists, The Poets, etc. The same method is followed 
in “The Wampum Library of American Literature,” 


[3] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


only three volumes of which have appeared.! This 
Library “ has been planned,” says the editor, Brander 
Matthews, ‘‘to include a series of uniform volumes, 
each of which shall deal with the development of a 
single literary species, tracing the evolution of this 
definite form here in the United States, and pre- 
senting in chronological sequence typical examples 
chosen from the writings of American authors. The 
editors of the several volumes provide critical in- 
troductions, in which they outline the history of 
the form as it has been evolved in the literature of 
the world.” 

The reason for this growing attention to literary 
types is to be sought chiefly in the rise and develop- 
ment of the American short story. The study of this 
type has led to the study of other types. More has 
been written, however, in the last ten years about the 
American short story than about all other types com- 
bined; for in the short story, if anywhere, American 
writers have evolved a new genre, as distinct from the 
novel as the ballad is distinct from the longer epic. 7 


1 These are “American Short Stories,” “American Literary 
Criticism,” and “American Familiar Verse (Vers de Société).” 


L4] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


As long ago as 1886 Anton E. Schénbach!? called 
attention to the American short story in these words : 


Eine Spezialitat der amerikanischen Erzahlungsliteratur ist 
die kurze Geschichte, Novellette, die eine der beliebtesten 
Gaben der Monatsschriften geworden ist. Sie unterscheidet 
sich sehr von dem, was man in England short stories nennt, 
in Deutschland ist sie fast unbekannt. Denn die Geschicht- 
chen, welche seinerzeit in der “ Illustrierten Welt,” in Payne’s 
“ Familienblatt,” im ‘Osterreichischen Lloyd” und sonst in 
Stuttgarter, Leipziger (jetzt besonders in der “Tllustrierten 
Zeitung”), Berliner Zeitschriften geboten wurden, gehérten 
einer niedrigen Gattung an, enthielten Abenteuer, Aufregung 
und Schrecken, Kriminalistisches. Am nachsten kommen in 
der Form einige kleine Sachen von Adalbert Stifter, von 
Lentner, von Theodor Fontane, und besonders von Rosegger. 
Aber im wesentlichen ist doch diese amerikanische short story 
etwas ganz Eigenartiges. Unsere Novellen sind viel umfang- 
reicher und haufig nur kondensierte Romane, indem sie 
das Vorher und Nachher eines entscheidenden Vorganges im 
Leben ihrer Gestalten mit vorbringen. Die kurze Magazin- 
geschichte der Amerikaner ist gegenwartig meistens ein kleines 
realistisches Lebensbild: ein Ausschnitt aus einem wirklichen 


Stiick Leben, ein einzelner, oft an sich unbedeutender, aber 


1 Deutsche Rundschau, Marz bis Mai. See Schédnbach’s “ Ge- 
sammelte Aufsatze ” (Graz, 1900), S. 417. 


[5] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


charakteristischer Vorfall wird beschrieben, oft wiederum nur 
eine mit etlichen Figuren staffierte Landschaft. Was man von 
dieser Gattung verlangt, ist Stimmung; es kommt daher alles 
auf den Erzahler selbst an, der aus der Menge kleiner, scharf 
beobachteter Ziige den poetischen Eindruck gewinnt und 
ungeschadigt darstellt. Am ehesten lasst sich damit die Stim- 
mungslandschaft der modernen Malerei vergleichen, die ja gar 
nicht mehr komponiert wird, wie man friiher pflegte, sondern 
durchaus den. Charakter der Studie besitzt und bei sorgfaltiger 
Ausfiihrung der Einzelheiten doch auch die Essenz einer 
gewissen Stimmung wiedergibt ; der Miinchener Neubert ver- 
steht sich darauf vortrefflich. Innerhalb des Rahmens der 
kurzen Geschichte haben natiirlich viele besondere Arten 
Platz. Fiir alle gibt es altere Vorgianger. 


cc 


The expression “short story,’’ it should be said, 
has been gradually undergoing a change of meaning. 
To most readers it is still a vague expression, like the 
German “‘ Novelle ’’! and the French ‘“‘nouvelle” and 
“conte.” Indeed it was not till recent years that 
American critics, following the lead of Poe, began to 


regard the short story as fundamentally different from 


1 See Edwin Rohde, “ Verhandlungen der dreissigsten Ver- 
sammlung Deutscher Philologen und Schulmanner in Rostock” 
(Leipzig, 1876), S. 58. 


[6] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


the novel and from the story that is merely short. 
The most important recent work on the subject is a 
little treatise by Brander Matthews called ‘‘ The Phi- 
losophy of the Short-story 1 (1901). Matthews, 
though recognizing Poe as the founder of the Amer- 
ican short story, thinks that he himself was the “ first 
to assert that the short story differs from the novel 
essentially and not merely in the matter of length.” 


He summarizes the difference as follows :2 ‘‘No one 


has ever succeeded as a writer of Short-stories who 
had not ingenuity, originality, and compression ; and 
most of those who have succeeded in this line had 
also the touch of fantasy. But there are not a few 
successful novelists lacking not only in fantasy and 
compression but also in ingenuity and originality ; 
they had other qualities, no doubt, but these they had 


” 


not.” He cites Anthony Trollope as an example. To 
make his distinction visible to the eye as well as to 


the mind, Matthews writes ‘‘ short story ” with a capi- 


s tal and hyphen (Short-story). 


1 The substance of Mr. Matthews’s views appeared first “in 
the columns of the Satuvday Review of London in the summer 
of 1884.” 

2“ The Philosophy of the Short-story,” p. 23. 


[7] 


ity 


r 


V 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


The distinction, however, between the novel and 


». the short story was expressed far more clearly by 


Friedrich Spielhagen as early as 1876.1 


Der Unterschied zwischen Novelle und Roman hat den 
Asthetikern schon viel Kopfzerbrechen verursacht. Indessen 
man hat sich im ganzen und grossen doch geeinigt und braucht 
keinen erheblichen Widerspruch zu fiirchten, wenn man jenen 
Unterschied ungefahr so charakterisiert: die Novelle hat es 
mit fertigen Charakteren zu tun, die durch eine besondere 
Verkettung der Umstande und Verhiltnisse in einen interes- 
santen Konflikt gebracht werden, wodurch sie gezwungen sind, 
sich in ihrer allereigensten Natur zu offenbaren, also, dass der 
Konflikt, der sonst Gott weiss wie hatte verlaufen kénnen, 
gerade diesen, durch die Figentiimlichkeit der engagierten 
Charaktere bedingten und schlechterdings keinen anderen 
Ausgang nehmen kann und muss. Fiigen wir noch hinzu, 
dass in der alteren Novelle “die besondere Verkettung der 
Umstande und Verhiltnisse ” praiponderiert, in der neueren 
dagegen, der modernen Empfindung gemiss, der Hauptakzent 
auf die “ Eigentiimlichkeit der engagierten Charaktere ” fallt, 

1 Novelle oder Roman? (in “ Beitrage zur Theorie und Technik 
des Romans”). Spielhagen’s first sentence implies an abundant 
literature on the subject. See also K. W. F. Solger’s “ Vor- 
lesungen iiber die Asthetik” (1829). For more recent discus- 
sions see Bibliographie zur Technik des neueren deutschen 


Romans, by Charles H. Handschin (Modern Language Notes, 
Baltimore, Dec. 1909, Jan. 1910). 


[8] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


so haben wir, glaube ich, so ziemlich beisammen, was die 
Novelle hinreichend scharf von den. Romane scheidet. .. . 
So gleicht die Novelle einem Multiplikationsexempel, in wel- 
chem mit wenigen Faktoren rasch ein sicheres Produkt heraus- 
gerechnet wird; der Roman einer Addition, deren Summe zu 
gewinnen, wegen der langen Reihe und der verschiedenen 
Grésse der Summanden, umstiandlich und im ganzen etwas 
unsicher ist. Deshalb hat auch die Novelle sowohl in ihrem 
Endzweck als in ihrer kiinstlerischen Okonomie eine ent- 
schiedene Ahnlichkeit mit dem Drama, wahrend der Roman 
(und nichts ist vielleicht bezeichnender fiir den tiefen Unter- 
schied zwischen Novelle und Roman) in jeder Beziehung des 
Stoffes, der Okonomie, der Mittel, ja selbst, subjektiv, in Hin- 
sicht der Qualitat der poctischen Phantasie und dichterischen 
Begabung, der volle Gegensatz des Dramas ist. 


Spielhagen has here made the distinction between 
the ‘‘Novelle” and the ‘‘Roman”’ to depend not on 
~ comparative length but on structure, and this is exactly 
the distinction made by Matthews. Poe, however, 
went still further; he, too, put the emphasis on struc- 
ture, but he made the very essence of the short story 
to consist in the production of a predetermined effect. 
Structure, as he viewed it, was merely a means to 
this end. “ Before you set about constructing your 


[9] 


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THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


short story,” Poe says in substance, “ determine on 
exactly the effect that you wish to produce; then 
choose your means, then adapt your structure, solely 


’ 


with this end in view.” In the following oft-quoted 
paragraph! Poe presents his formula for the short 
story with his usual clearness and precision: “A skill- 
ful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he 
has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his 
. incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, 
a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, 
he then invents such incidents —he then combines 
such events —as may best aid him in establishing 
this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence - 
_ tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has 
failed in his first step. In the whole composition there 
should be no word written of which the tendency, 
direct or indirect, is not to the one preéstablished 
design. And by such means, with such care and skill, 
a picture is at length painted which leaves in the 
mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, 


1See his review of Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales” 
(Graham’s Magazine, May, 1842); Virginia Edition (1902), Vol. 
XI, p. 108. 


~ 


[ 10 ] 


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THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale 
has been presented unblemished because undisturbed ; 
and this is an end unattainable by the novel.” 
Judged by the amount of comment that it has 
evoked, and by the probable influence that it has 
exerted on the development of the American short 


story, the paragraph just quoted is easily the most \ 


important piece of critical writing in American litera-( 
ture. Every discussion of the American short story 
is apt to begin or to end with it. Poe himself must 
have felt that he had made a significant contribu- 


tion to the technique of the short story, — or, as he | 
called it, the tale, — for he repeats his views in 


many other passages. It will be seen that he places 


the emphasis on unity, on compression, or, as he 


preferred to call it, on “ totality of effect.’ This is 


the quality above all that distinguished his own work, 
whether in prose or in verse. It is also the quality 
that has given distinction to the American short 
story as a separate literary genre. It is, moreover, 
the criterion by which the novel is distinguished 
from the short story, and the short story from the 
story that is merely short. 
[11] 


— al 


aa 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


The four writers who have done most to give the 
American short story its present-day rank are, in 


| “chronological order, Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, and 
\Bret Harte. It is worthy of note that these writers 


almost without exception called their brief narratives 
“tales” or “sketches,” not short stories. The term 
“short story,” therefore, is of very modern origin; 
the thing itself, however, goes back at least as far as 
1835, the date of Poe’s _ Boren. In this lecture 
I shall use the term ,“ short Stor Story ” both in its tech- 


, nical and linpechtel sense ; that is, as designating 
{the brief, compact, intense, and highly unified story 
/ }as written by Poe and Bret Harte, and as designating 


the looser and more leisurely story as written by Irving 
and not infrequently by Hawthorne. 

It has already been said! that Irving, in ‘ Rip 
Van Winkle” and ‘‘ The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” 
inaugurated a distinctive type of short story, the short 
story of local color. This has been called, since 1870, 
the “ garden-patch’”’ type of story, because in it each 
writer may be said to cultivate his own garden, or 
rather his own “patch” in the national garden. 


1 Lecture on Irving. 


[12] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


Judged by the strict demands of structure, as outlined 
by Poe, both “ Rip Van Winkle”’ and “ The Legend 
of Sleepy Hollow” are tales rather than short 
stories. If Poe had written ‘“ Rip Van Winkle,” he 
would have inverted the sequence of the story. He 
would have begun with Rip’s return from the moun- 
tain. He would have directed the reader’s attention, 
first of all, to the mysterious problem presented by the 
sudden emergence of a stranger who did not know 
that the Revolutionary War had been fought. Then, 
when the mystery seemed almost insoluble, he would 
have introduced this passage: ‘‘All stood amazed, until 
an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, 
put her hand to her brow, and peering under it into 
his face for a moment, exclaimed.: ‘ Sure enough! It 
is Rip Van Winkle — it is himself! Welcome home 
again, old neighbor. Why, where have you been these 
twenty long years?’” This passage would have oc- 
curred about the middle of the story, instead of two 
pages from the end, and would have been followed 
by a detailed explanation of the mystery. 

The story would thus have gained in intensity of 
interest, in artistic unity, and in economy of details ; 


[13 ] 


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THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


but it would certainly have lost something of the 
charming humor that irradiates it and much of the 
accuracy of milieu that gives distinction to it as a 
specific type of short story. Under Poe’s treatment 
Rip would have ceased to be a clearly defined char- 
acter and would have become a mere symbol of the 
past. In other words, ‘‘ Rip Van Winkle ”’ is a proof 
that the old-fashioned tale may appeal to as many 
readers, may indeed be as well told in its way, as the 
short story with the hyphen. In every form of litera- 
ture the author’s personality must be taken into con- 
sideration. A story, therefore, may vary widely from 
Poe’s standard, but exhibit nevertheless excellence 
of structure and even unity of structure, not by the 
handling of the plot, but by the perfect blending 
of the author’s personality: and, his style. “ Die 
Hauptvorziige der Irvingschen Schriften,” says a 
recent critic! ‘“‘beruhen auf ihrer einfachen Natiir- 
lichkeit, der vortrefflichen Beobachtungsgabe, ihrem 
liebenswiirdigen Humor und dem edlen, geradezu 
klassischen Stile.”” These qualities, it may be added, 


1 Professor Dr. F. Meyer, “Selection of American Prose- 
Writers” (Freytags Sammlung, Leipzig, 1909), Einleitung, S. 5. 


(14 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


will give distinction to any type of literature, whatever 
be its purely technical defects. 

Irving’s best stories are found in “ The Sketch- 
Book” (1819-1820), “ Bracebridge Hall” (1822), 
eo Vhe Valesof a Praveller:!)(1824), and“): The 
Alhambra” (1832). Though these stories cover a 
wide range of history and legend, the form varies 
but little, and this form is an evolution from, rather 
than an imitation of, ‘‘The Spectator” of Addison 
and Steele. “ The Spectator ” is a collection of essays 
and character sketches. Out of the character sketches 
came ultimately not only the first form of the Ameri- 
can short story but also the English novel of Rich- 
ardson and Fielding.4 ‘‘ Sir Roger de Coverley,” for 
example, is a typical character sketch. But ‘‘ Rip Van 
Winkle” is more than a character sketch; it is a 
character sketch in the moment of transition into 
a short story. It is a sketch in its wealth of descrip‘ 
tion, in its skillful portrayal of character, and in the 
leisurely movement of its style; it is a short story 
in its narrative continuity, in its interweaving of 


1 See Wilbur L. Cross’s “ The Development of the English 
Novel” (1909), p. 25. 


[15] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


character with incident, and in its steady progress 
toward a culminating dénouement. 

By 1833 Irving had written his best stories and 
was planning larger works. In the same year Poe 
published his ‘‘ MS. found in a Bottle’”’ and won by 
it a hundred-dollar prize. It was in “ Berenice,” how- 
ever, written two years later, that Poe first showed 
the mastery of technique that was to make him the 
founder of the new gente. In June of the same 
year — Poe’s story having appeared in March — 
Hawthorne published “The Ambitious Guest.” 
Both stories are thoroughly characteristic of their 
authors, and may well serve as the basis for a com- 
parison of their respective methods of workmanship. 
Poe’s story: moves to its conclusion as undeviatingly 
as a bullet to its target. There is one dominating 
impression to be produced, and every incident, every 
explanation, “every sentence, every word contributes 
directly and cumulatively to the end in view. Plot, 
atmosphere, style are fused into perfect unity. The 
first paragraph presupposes, “but does not reveal, the 
last, as the last presupposes and completes the first. 
The reader is told nothing which he may infer for 


[16] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


himself, but enough is told to make his inference in- 
evitable. The theme of the story is that particular form 
of monomania induced by concentration upon one idea 
until that idea becomes an obsession: “ This mono- 
mania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid 
irritability of those properties of the mind in meta- 
physical science termed the attentive. It is mgre 
than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, 
indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to 
the mind of the merely general reader an adequate idea 
of that nervous zz¢ensity of interest with which, in my 
case, the powers of meditation (not to speak techni- 
cally)busiedand buried themselves in the contemplation 
of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.” 
Hawthorne’s theme in “The Ambitious Guest” 
is the“futility of a noble ambition, but this theme is 
not allowed to suggest itself; it is. introduced into 
the conversations of all the eight characters. Even 
the children, who had been put to bed in another 
room, ‘seemed to have caught the infection from 
the fireside circle, and werg, outvying each other in 
wild wishes, and childish projects of what they 
would do when they came to be men and women.” 


[17] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


Not content with this, Hawthorne adds a few com- 
ments at the end, exactly as would be done in a 
formal sermon: “Woe for the high-souled youth, 
with his dream of Earthly Immortality! His name 
and person utterly unknown; his history, his way 
of life, his plans, a mystery never to be solved, his 
death and his existence equally a doubt!” 

Poe, even in his earliest stories, is never guilty of 
adding what did not need to be added, Of the art of 
knowing when to stop — perhaps the rarest of all arts 
— he was a consummate master. It was an art im- 
plied in his theory of what the short story should be. 
This theory had reference also to poetry as well as 
to prose, and Poe’s poems may serve equally as illus- 
trations of his technique. That Hawthorne blundered 
frequently here will be evident to any one who will 
’ glance at the concluding parts of such otherwise 
excellent short stories as ‘‘ Mr. Higginbotham’s Catas- 
trophe,” ‘The Vision of the Fountain,” ‘‘ Prophetic 
Pictures,” ‘‘ David Swan,” ‘‘ The Threefold Destiny,” 
and “ The Birthmark.”’ rf It is probable that some of 


1 Hawthorne’s interest in the elixir of life and in the problems 
suggested by it may be traced not only in “ The Birthmark,”’ 


[18] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY > 


these inartistic endings may find their explanation in 
a remark that Hawthorne ‘once made about his story 
called “‘ Rappacini’s Daughter.” “I did not know,” | 
he said, ‘‘ while writing it, how it would end.” | 

In the beginning of his stories as well as at the 
end Hawthorne also at times differs widely from 
Poe. The story called “ Wakefield” (1835) is an 
example. In the first paragraph the entire plot is 
sketched in advance, The story is of a man who 
left his home and wife, but took lodgings in a house 
just across the street. For twenty years he saw his 
wife only at a distance, she in the meanwhile think- 
ing him dead. At the end of twenty years he 
returned to his home as quietly as he had left it. 
The story as Hawthorne tells it in twelve pages is 
not so much a story as a study of a given situation. 


bf 


“If the reader choose,’”’ says Hawthorne, “let him 


do his own meditation; or if he prefer to ramble 


but in “ Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” ‘A Virtuoso’s Collec- 
tion,” “The Great Carbuncle,” “ Septimius Felton,” “The Dol- 
liver Romance,” and “A Select Party.” Compare also William 
Godwin’s novel, “ St. Leon” (1799), a story of the misery which 
an alchemist had to endure from the possession of the elixir of 
life ; and Hoffmann’s “ Elixiere des Teufels.” 


[19] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


with me through the twenty years of Wakefield’s 
vagary, I bid him welcome.’’ Hawthorne has thus 


deliberately deprived the story of the interest of 


unexpectedness. What interest it has is due not to 


_ skillful — of the final issue, but to the 
author’s interpretation of the character of a man 


who would play such a joke on an innocent wife. 
The story resembles the Greek tragedies, in which 
the audience knew beforehand wat would happen, 
but were interested none the less in ow it would 
happen. Had Poe told the story, he would have kept 


\tthe reader in suspense as to Wakefield’s return until 


the last paragraph.! 

In still other respects the short stories of Haw- 
thorne and Poe stand far apart. Hawthorne appeals 
primarily to the conscience. He was a descendant of 
Puritans, and the problems of conscience were the 
problems ia which they were chiefly interested. Poe 
enters this realm rarely. His “ William Wilson,” 

1 Poe, it is true, praises “ Wakefield,” but not for its structure. 
“The force of Mr. Hawthorne’s tale,” he says, “lies in the 
analysis of the motives which must or might have impelled the 


husband to such folly.” See his review of Hawthorne’s “ Twice- 
Told Tales” (Graham’s Magazine, May, 1842). 


[ 20 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


however, that profound study of good and evil fight- 
ing for supremacy in a single soul, is evidence that 
Poe could treat moral themes in a masterly way when 
he chose. But he did not believe that the chief end 
of art was to inculcate morality. Then, agaih, Haw- 
thorne’s imagination, far more than Poe’s, demanded 


some physical image, some concrete symbol, as a cen- 


ter for its activities. He is indeed the greatest of 
symbolists. In his “ Twice-Told Tales” the word 
“symbol” occurs twenty-five times, the word ‘ em- 
blem” twenty times. Among his favorite symbols 
may be mentioned a shroud, a black veil, a carbuncle, 
a snake, a mantle, a butterfly, a cross, and a scarlet 
letter. The latter, which he used with such telling® 
effect in the great novel of that name, had been already 
employed by him as a symbol of sin in the short story 
called ‘‘ Endicott and the Red Cross” (1838). No 
other symbol ever exercised so potent a spell over 
his imagination as this. Indeed in one passage of 
“ The Scarlet Letter,” the passage in which the scarlet 
letter is made to appear suddenly in the sky, the reader 
feels that what was intended as a climax is really 
an anticlimax. 


[21] 


* 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


Poe’s contribution to the American short story 
was not in the direction of symbolism or of super- 
naturalism, though he employed both. Still less is it 
to be sought in a more accurate use of local color, 
for local color owes nothing to Poe. His contribution 
lay in a more perfect form, a more artistic technique. 
in his formula for the short story, which we have 
already cited, Poe laid down principles which could 
be employed with equal effect, whatever the theme or 
thought content of the story might be. It might be 
a story of conscience, a mere sketch, an episode, a 
character study, the portrayal of an interesting situa- 
tion, a bit of tragedy, or a humorous anecdote. Poe 
“said nothing about theme; his advice was, ‘‘ Drive 
straight to the point, whatever your theme.” 

As a matter of fact, his own stories have been 
divided by the critics into many classes. But from the 
point of view of structure, they fall into only two 
classes. ‘‘ Berenice’’ (1835) is, in point of time, his 
first masterpiece of the first class ; ‘‘ The Murders in 
the Rue Morgue” (1841), his first masterpiece of the 
second class. In the first there is an unbroken cumu- 
lative movement from the first paragraph to the last ; 


[ 22 ] 


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THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


in the second the mystery deepens in the first half 
and is completely solved in the second half. The first 
type may be represented by a capital A: the lines 
of interest converge and culminate at the apex; the 
second type may be represented by a capital B: the 
story, in other words, is divided into two equal and . 
corresponding sections or semicircles. To the latter | 
class belongs the detective story, of which Poe is 
justly considered the founder.! Stories of this kind 
appeal primarily to our intellectual curiosity, to our 
puzzle-solving instinct. The stories of the A type 
appeal more to our art sense —to our feeling for 
unity, for harmony, for climax. In both there is 
perfect ‘‘ totality of effect,” but it is obtained in dif- 
ferent ways. In stories of the A type there is no break 
either in kind or degree of interest. In stories of the 


1“Edgar Allan Poe ist, wie es scheint, der Erfinder des wirk- 
samen Erzahlerkniffs, sowie er auch der Vorlaufer Conan 
Doyles in der Schoépfung der Detektivgeschichte geworden ist. 
Die Novelle vom ‘ Goldkafer’ ist das Vorbild zahlloser Nach- 
ahmer geworden. * Die Mordtaten in der Rue Morgue’ enthalten 
im Keime bereits alle Elemente, aus denen die moderne Detek- 
tivnovelle von der Art der Sherlock Holmes-Serie besteht” 
(“Die Englische Literatur im Zeitalter der K6nigin Viktoria,” 
von Leon Kellner (Leipzig, 1909), S. 23). 


[ 23 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


B type there is a caesural pause in the middle, but 
this pause does not separate the two half-lines, — if 
we may continue our metrical figure, — but only binds 
them into closer harmony. 

In 1849 Poe died, and Hawthorne turned from 
short stories to novels. From now on, till the rise of 
Bret Harte, few short stories of real merit were written. 
Two, however, deserve consideration. These are 
_ “What was it?” (1859), by Fitz-James O’Brien ; and 
~“‘ The Man without a Country” (1863), by Edward 
Everett Hale. The conception of ‘‘ What was it?” 
would have delighted Poe’s soul, though he would 
have improved the technique. As it stands, however, 
it is the best short story written in the Poe manner 
that the last half century can boast. The mysterious 
object in the story could be felt, heard, measured, 
and weighed, but not seen. ‘I cannot even attempt,” 
says the narrator, “to giye any definition of my sen- 
sations the instant after I turned on the ro Uae | 
saw nothing! Yes; I had one arm firmly clasped 
round a breathing, panting, corporeal shape; my 
other hand gripped with all its strength a throat as 
warm, and apparently as fleshy, as my own ; and yet, 


[ 24 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


with this living substance in my grasp, with its body 
pressed against my own, and all in the bright glare 
of a large jet of gas, I absolutely beheld nothing! 
Not even an outline, a vapor!’”’ When the creature 
died a plaster cast was taken of it. ‘‘ It was shaped 
like a man — distorted, uncouth, and horrible, but 
still a man. It was small, not over four feet and — 
some inches in height, and its limbs revealed a 
muscular development that was unparalleled. Its 
face surpassed in hideousness anything I had ever 
seen.” 

The story has undoubted originality and is admi- 
rably told. Matthews! thinks Poe would not have con- 
descended to the prosaic plaster cast at the end. But 
why not? The taking of the cast merely emphasized 
the qualities that the creature was known to possess. 
One may venture the opinion, however, that Poe 
would have gone more deeply into the real nature of 
such a monster, and would at least have suggested 
an explanation of its origin. 


1“ The Short-Story: Specimens illustrating its Development” 
(New York, 1907), by Brander Matthews, p. 246. ‘ O’Brien’s 
story,” says Matthews, “seems to have suggested to Guy de Mau- 
passant his even more powerful * Le Horla.’” 


[25 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


“The Man without a Country ” owes its popularity 
not so much to a skillful plot — there is really no plot 
—as to a rarely suggestive situation, firmly grasped 
and intelligently worked out. It was written during 
the Civil War for the express purpose of stimulating 
patriotism. Philip Nolan, lieutenant in the United 
States Army, said with an oath that he hoped never 
to hear of the United States again. ‘‘ The court sen- 
tenced him to have his wish fulfilled.” This is the 
whole story, or rather this is the situation which DrJ___— 
Hale has developed. It is in fact a Hawthorne story, 
just as ‘‘ What was it?” isa Poe story. The question 
with Dr. Hale was not, ‘‘ How may I tell an inter- 
esting story?” but, ‘‘How may I develop all the 
potentialities of an interesting situation ?” 

This, it may be said in passing, is the method of 
Henry James, except that his situations are frequently 
not interesting. In a recent story, ‘“‘ The Beldonald 
Holbein,” 1 James says, ‘‘It is not my fault if Iam 
so put together as often to find more life in situations 
obscure and subject to interpretation than in the gross 
rattle of the foreground.” One could not find a more 


1 See “ The Better Sort” (New York, 1903). 
[ 26] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


luminous comment upon his short stories than these 
words contain. The situations that he prefers are, 
as he says, ‘“‘obscure” but “subject to interpretation.” 
Hawthorne’s situations, however, even when obscure, 
are always vital. We cannot imagine Hawthorne 
saying, as James says,! ‘“‘It is an incident for a 
woman to stand up with her hand resting on a table 
and look out at you in a certain way.” No, this is 
not an incident; if it be anything, it is a situation, 
and a very trivial and anzmic one at that. Haw- 
thorne, in a word, deals with primary emotions, 
James with secondary emotions. 

After “The Man without a Country” the next 
great American short story to appear was “ The Luck 
of Roaring Camp.” It was published in 1868, but 
appeared in book form in 1870 with ‘‘ The Outcasts 
of Poker Flat’ and “‘ Tennessee’s Partner.” In these 
stories Bret Harte did more than any one else to 
give the American short story immediate recognition 
as a new genre both at home and abroad. Had 
he written nothing else his fame would be secure. 
He continued, however, to write short stories of 


1 See his “Art of Fiction.” 


[ 27 ] 


) 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


California life until his death in 1902, but he never 
surpassed the three stories just mentioned. 

Bret Harte’s early models were Irving and Dickens. 
As early as 1863 he contributed to Zhe Adlantic 
Monthly a story called “The Legend of Monte del 
Diablo,” which shows in every paragraph the influ- 
ence of Irving’s pictures of Spanish life. His poem 
entitled “Dickens in Camp” would seem to show 
that what he most admired at first in Dickens was his 
sentimentality. By 1868, however, he had found his 
own style, a style that owed little to Dickens and less 
to Irving ; sentimentality had given place to realism, 
though Bret Harte’s realism was never of the uncom- 
promising type; it was realism in the service of 
idealism. Fortunately the greatest short-story writers 
in American literature have put on record a statement 
of the principles that guided them in the structure of 
their narratives. Bret Harte is no exception. In an 
article entitled “The Rise of the Short Story”! he de- 
clares that though Poe, Hawthorne, and Longfellow 2 


1 Published in Zhe Cornhill Magazine, July, 1899. 
2 He had in mind Longfellow’s “Tales of a Wayside Inn,” 
only three of which deal with American history. 


[ 28 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


wrote excellent short stories, their work did not in- 
dicate sufficient knowledge of American geography, 
was not American enough. The Civil War, he says, 
had fused the North, the South, the East, and the 
West into one great nation, but only Edward Everett 
Hale, in ‘‘The Man without a Country,” had realized 
this fact ; California, in the days of the forty-niners, 
was a great melting pot in which the diverse elements 
of American life had already, before the sixties, be- 
gun to assume unity and homogeneity; realizing the 
opportunity before him, he had written ‘‘The Luck 
of Roaring Camp.” 

x He sums up his views as follows: “‘ The secret of 
‘the American short story is the treatment of charac- 
teristic American life, with absolute knowledge of its 
peculiarities and sympathy with its methods ; with no 
fastidious ignoring of its habitual expression, or the 
inchoate poetry that may be found hidden even in its 
slang ; with no moral determination except that which 
may be the legitimate outcome of the story itself ; 
with no more elimination than may be necessary for 
the artistic conception, and never from jthe fear 
of the fetish of conventionalism. Of such is the 


[29 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


American short story of to-day, the germ of American 
literature to come.” 

Bret Harte, then, consciously created a new kind 
of short story. His purpose, as he himself stated it, 
' was to found ‘‘a distinctive Western American litera- 
ture.”” And yet an examination of his stories makes 
it evident that they are distinctive not so much in 
structure as in locale. He opened a new field to 
American literature but he exemplified no new prin- 
ciple of art. His technique at its best is that of Poe : 
indeed, he was the first to show that Poe’s technique 
would serve as well for stories told objectively as for 
stories told subjectively. Poe’s milieu, it is true, is 
an. imaginary milieu, while Bret Harte’s is definite 
and American. But the art of making the milieu an 
essential factor in the story is displayed as clearly 
in “The Fall of the House of Usher”’ as in “ The 
Outcasts of Poker Flat.’ 

Bret Harte’s method of character portrayal is by 
no means complicated. It was once remarked by 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge that both good and bad men 
‘are less so than they seem. Bret Harte undoubtedly 
believed that this was true of bad men; they were 

[ 3° ] 


— 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


not so bad, in his mind, as society regarded them. 
Like Mark Twain, he was always on the side of the 
individual and against the institution, whether social, 


civil, or religious. He sought to prove that vice, 


. ** Like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.” 


His characteristic method is to show that those whom 
society treats as outcasts have yet some redeeming 
virtue that puts to shame their censors. When he was 
criticized for confusing the boundary lines of virtue 
and vice, he replied that his stories ‘conformed to 
the rules laid down by a Great Poet who created the 
parable of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.” 

The reply can hardly be called a happy one, for 
Bret Harte’s method is the antithesis of that of Christ. 
It is true that he does not make vice attractive ; he 
makes virtue attractive ; but he does so by uniting it 
to a reputation for evil. When Bret Harte introduces 
us to a thief, or murderer, or harlot, we know at once 
that the thief will turn out to be a hero in disguise, 
the murderer a model of manliness, the harlot a 
paragon of unselfishness. In fact, noble qualities are 


[31] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


attractive in Bret Harte’s pages, not because of what 
they are in themselves, but because of the contrast 
between them and the vessel in which they are con- 
tained. Christ shows us the prodigal son eating with 
swine; Bret Harte would have sketched him leaning 
gracefully against the side of the pigpen, wiping the 
dust from his shoes with a silk handkerchief, and 
surveying scornfully the scene before him. 

As to Bret Harte’s humor, it is of a kind that had 
already found partial expression in the South. In 
fact, wherever in American history two distinct grades 
of civilization, a higher and a lower, have come into 
contact with one another, — wherever there has been 
a borderland, — humor has been one of the results. 
Mark Twain portrayed the humor of the Southwest 
when the Southwest was the meeting place of a reced- 
ing and an advancing’society. The same conditions 
prevailed in the South a generation earlier and found 
humorous expression in ‘‘Georgia Scenes” (1836),! 

1 This book enjoys the rare distinction of having made Poe 
laugh and laugh uproariously. “Seldom,” he said, “perhaps 
never in our lives, have we laughed as immoderately over any 


book as over the one now before us.” See the Virginia Edition 
(1902), Vol. VIII, p. 258. 


[ 32 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


by Augustus Baldwin Longstreet; in ‘‘ Major Jones’s 
Courtship ”’ (1840), by William Tappan Thompson; 
n “The Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs” 
(1846), by Johnson Jones Hooper; and in “‘ Flush 
Times of Alabama and Mississippi” (1853), by 
Joseph Glover Baldwin. 

‘““ Since 1870,” as was said in a former lecture, 
‘our best writers are those who have reproduced 
the scenery ip the characters that they knew and 
_loved best.” “In 1892 Colonel Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson 1 declared that ‘‘the rapid multiplication 
of the portable kodak had scarcely surpassed the swift 
growth of local writers, each apparently having the 
same equipment of directness and vigor.” Writing 
only a few months ago, William Dean Howells? 
expressed himself as follows: ‘‘ In the extraordinary 
development of local literature among us, ever since 
the Pacific Slope began to express itself in the 
peculiar colors and cadences of its romances and 
poets, we have to confess an apparent divinity in the 


1See “The Local Short Story” (Zhe lndependent, New 
York, March 11). 

2 See his review of “Mr. Harben’s Georgia Fiction” (Zhe 
North American Review, March, 1910). 


[33 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


geographical distribution of American authorship. . .. 
In this sort of work there has seemed to me the 
highest promise of a national literature ; and in the 
devotion, the zesthetic patriotism, if I may reach out 
for a meaning rather beyond the phrase, I have read 
the prophecy of something finely and finally American. 
If the reader will try to think what the state of polite 
learning (as they used to call it in the eighteenth cen- 
tury) would now be among us, if each of our authors 
had studied to ignore, as they have each studied to 
recognize, the value of the character and tradition 
nearest about them, I believe he will agree with me 
that we owe everything that we now are in literature 
to their instinct of vicinage.” 

Most of the short-story writers who rose to prom- 
inence after 1870 have been mentioned in a former 
lecture. To the list should be added Sarah Orne 
Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins (since 1902 Mrs. Charles M. 
Freeman), and William Sidney Porter, better known 
as O. Henry. The death of Sarah Orne Jewett in 
1909 removed a writer who for thirty years had 
been a sort of mediator between the country people 
and the city people of the New England States. 

[ 34] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


“When I began to write,” she once said, —that is, 
in 1877,— ‘‘city people and country people. were 
a little suspicious of each other; and, more than 
that, the only New Englander generally recognized 
in literature was the caricatured Yankee.’”’ She wrote 
of New England country people just as they were, 
and thirty years ago the field was a comparatively 
new one. She was born in Maine and her best stories 
are found in “ The Country of the Pointed Firs” 
(1896), this being another name for her native state. 
All of her stories show an accurate knowledge of 
local character and dialect, a gentle and sympathetic 
humor, and a style of rare purity and distinction. 
Mary E. Wilkins, who is usually grouped with 
Sarah Orne Jewett, presents, however, the more 
somber side of New England life. Her characters 
are usually abnormal, or at least obsessed by some 
fixed idea. Her first notable volume, ““A Humble 
Remonstrance”’ (1887), contains twenty-eight short 
stories and sketches of life ina Massachusetts village ~ 
There is genuine pathos in these stories ; and in her 
next volume, ““A New England Nun and Other © 
Stories’ (1891), pathos is reénforced by humor. 


[35] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


There is an element of monotony, however, in her 
work, due partly to sameness of milieu and partly to 
the narrow range of emotions that her characters 
illustrate. The influence of Hawthorne is plainly 
traceable in many of her stories,! while that of 
Harriet Beecher Stowe? is equally evident in the 
work of Sarah Orne Jewett. 

The third writer, William Sidney Porter,’ has 
been called ‘‘the American Maupassant,’ ‘‘the 


9d Oe 


apostle of the picaresque,” ‘the discoverer of the 


” “the Homer of 
the tenderloin,” and ‘“‘the Bret Harte of the city.” 


His contact with the different phases of American 


romance of New York’s streets, 


life was almost as varied as that of Mark Twain. 
Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, at the close of 
the Civil War, he moved in boyhood to Texas, where 
he lived ona cattle ranch. He then became an editor 


1 See especially “ Silence and Other Stories” (1898). 

2 T have reference especially to “Oldtown Folks ” (1869). 

8 For appraisals of O. Henry, see Zhe Bookman (New York, 
April, 1910); Zhe New York Times (June 6, 1910) ; Wew- Yorker 
Staats-Zeitung (June 6, 1910); Zhe Evening Post (New York, 
June 6, 1910); and 7%e Outlook (New York, June 18, 1910). The 
best sketch of his boyhood is in 7ke Daily Observer (Charlotte, 
N. C., August 9, 1908). 


[36] 


- 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


in Austin, the capital of Texas. Finding this life 
monotonous, he moved to Central America and tried 
raising bananas. On his return he settled in New 
Orleans and began to write under the nom de plume 
of O. Henry. In 1902 he moved to New York, 
where he died on June 5, I9IO. 

O. Henry will live longest as the short-story his- 
torian of New York. He knew the great city — its 
outer and its inner life, its poetry and its pathos, its 
humor and its tragedy, its changing moods and whims 
—as no one else has ever known it. The abundant 
use of slang, in which he was an adept, will probably 
bar most of his stories from translation into foreign 
tongues. But underneath the slang, underneath all 
that to a careless reader may seem purely local and 
contemporary, there is a wide sympathy with elemen- 
tal life in all of its manifestations. ‘‘ They say,’’ he 
once remarked, “that I know New York well. Just 
change Twenty-third Street in one of my New York 
stories to Main Street, rub out the Flatiron Building 
and insert Town Hall, and the story will fit any up- 
state town just as well. So long as a story is true to 


) 


} 


human nature, all you need to do to make it fit any » 


Var 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


town is to change the local color. You can make all 
the characters of ‘The Arabian Nights’ parade up 
and down Broadway.’’ His best short stories are in 
“ The Four Million ’’ (1906), ‘‘ Heart of the West ” 
(1908), and ‘“‘ The Voice of the City” (1908). 

As far as O. Henry may be said to have had a 
philosophy, it can be expressed in the words in which 
he outlined the theme of his play, ““The World and the 
Door” (1908): “‘ My purpose is to show that in every 
human heart there is an innate tendency toward a 
respectable life ; that even those who have fallen to 
the lowest depths in the social scale would, if they 
could, get back to the higher life; that the innate 
propensity of human nature is to choose the good 
instead of the bad.” 

Before concluding this lecture I wish to glance 
at some of the reasons why the short story has played 
so important a part in American literature. With- 
out attempting to be exhaustive, one may summarize 
these reasons under four heads: 

1. In the first place, there was for a long time no 
satisfactory copyright law between England and 
America. Most of the novels read by Americans 

[38] 





THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


were of English authorship. At last, however, Amer- 
ican authors, feeling little disposition to compete with 
Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, and Bulwer in 
their own field, turned to the short story. Here the 
demand was great and the supply from English 
sources by no means equal to the demand. It was 
to the short story, therefore, that aspiring writers in 
America devoted their especial attention. In a word, 
as W. J. Dawson! puts it, ““ The conditions which 
repressed the short story in England acted powerfully 
for its benefit in America.’ It should be added that 
since the copyright act of 1891 the American writer 
of short stories is no longer compelled to produce 
his work in competition with stolen goods. 

2. In the second place, the rise and development 
of the American short story was closely associated 
with the rise and development of the American 
magazine. The magazine created a demand which 
the writers of short stories found it profitable to 


supply. In the English magazine, however, the serial 


novel occupied the place of honor until the advent of 


1“ The Modern Short Story” (Zhe North American Review, 
December, 1909). 


[39 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


Stevenson and Kipling. The English magazines now 
prefer the short story to the continued novel. In his 
discussion of recent tendencies in English fiction 
Wiilker remarks : } 


Alle genannten Schriftsteller von Kipling bis Jakobs haben 
ihre besondere Starke in der short story, und es scheint, als 
ob dieses hauptsachlich von amerikanischen Autoren, Edgar 
Poe, Irving, Hawthorne, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, gepflegte 
Genre auch von englischen Novellisten neuerdings ganz beson- 
ders bevorzugt wiirde. Der Hauptgrund dafiir liegt darin, 
dass viele englische Zeitschriften und Zeitungen danach stre- 
ben, ihre Leser méglichst mit Fortsetzungen zu verschonen 
und ihnen in jeder Nummer einen abgeschlossenen Unter- 


haltungsstoff zu liefern. 


3. Then, again, the very bigness of the United 
States, the variety of customs and dialects, the pres- 
ence of the Indian and the negro, the social con- 
trasts, the movement westward, the constant presence 
of frontier types of character—these offered an 
opportunity for the new gezre not found elsewhere. 
Our short-story writers have done more than our 


1 * Geschichte der englischen Literatur” (Leipzig und Wien, 
1907), Band II, S. 343. 


[4°] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


poets to show the variety in unity and the unity in 
variety that have always been characteristic of Amer- 
ican life. They have thus helped to bridge the chasm 
made by the Civil War. They have enabled the dif- 
ferent sections to know each other, and with wider 
knowledge there has come a better understanding 
and a more intelligent sympathy. When the great 
American novel comes to be written it will draw 
largely upon the short story, for it will interpret the 
local in terms of the national. 

4. In the last place, the short story has appealed 
strongly to the American people because it is short. 
It has a brief intensity that harmonizes with the 
national temper. Schonbach,! discussing the Amer- 
ican tendency to humor, says: 

Man kann, wenn man Lust hat, diese Neigung auf die Natur 
des Landes zuriickfiihren ... oder man kann sie auch der 


nervosen Spannung zuschreiben, die fast zu einem Grundzuge 


amerikanischen Wesens wird. 


The explanation fits equally well the American's 
fondness for the short story. The average short story 
consumes about the same length of time that a game 


1“ Gesammelte Aufsatze” (Graz, 1900), S. 364. 


[41 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


of baseball does. It moves, moreover, to its conclu- 
sion — it does its work — with an economy of details, 
with a definiteness of purpose, with an efficiency of 
means that find a quick response from the average 

\ American reader. It was this same preference for 
brief, intense, and at the same time idealistic liter- 
ature that made the Americans accord a warmer 
welcome to Browning’s poems than was accorded 
them elsewhere. Browning’s best poems are dra- 
matic monologues, and the dramatic monologue is 
in poetry what the short story is in prose. 

What the future of the short story in America 
will be can only be conjectured. For myself I cherish 
the hope that as the short story grew out of the essay, 
so a national drama may grow out of the short storys 
“Ein Novellenstoff,’ says Spielhagen,! “‘ist fast 
immer zugleich dramatisch ; folglich kann beinahe 
jede Novelle in ein Drama umgedichtet werden.” 
Marion Crawford, it is true, calls the novel “a pocket 
stage,” ‘‘a portable drama’’; but, as Spielhagen says, 
the real analogy is not between the drama and the 


1 “Beitrige zur Theorie und Technik des Romans” (Leipzig, 
1883), S. 285. 


[ 42 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


novel but between the drama and the short story. 
The architecture of the two is singularly alike; 
“totality of effect’ is the watchword in both, Indeed 
Poe claims to have found the expression “‘ totality of 
effect” in Schlegel’s ‘‘ Vorlesungen iiber dramatische 
Kunst und Litteratur.” The resemblance between 
the drama and the short story will at once become 
apparent if one will read, for example, Lamb’s “‘ Tales 
from the Plays of Shakespeare” and view them not 
as paraphrases of dramas but as original short stories. 

It has always seemed that a national drama ought 
to have arisen in America between the years 1830 
and 1840. This was the period of our first great 
national awakening — an awakening in literature, in 
journalism, in industrialism, and in statesmanship. 
But this awakening was coincident with the rise of 
sectionalism, a denationalizing influence. When the 
second awakening came immediately after 1870,) 
the memories of the Civil War were too fresh for the 
national spirit to embody itself at once in any form 
of literature. Now, however, all is different. By 
means of the short story, in which every state of the 
Union has found representation, the nation has come 

: [ 43 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


to know itself better and to appraise more justly its 
constituent parts. Sectionalism is dead. Memories 
of the Civil War serve only to make us realize the 
greatness of our common country. Each side recog- 
nizes the valor and the sincerity of the opposing side, 
and in this recognition partisanship is lost in patriot- 
ism. If ever a nation was ready for a national drama, 
that nation is America. When it comes, as surely it | 
will come, the short story will have achieved its 
greatest triumph. 


[44] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Life and Letters of Washington Irving, by Pierre M. 
Irving (New York, 1869), Vol. II, pp. 64-65. 


The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Edi- 

@tion, by James A. Harrison (New York, 1902), Vol. XI, pp. 

104-113. This is the review of Hawthorne’s 7wéce-Told 
Tales, first published in Graham’s Magazine, May, 1842. 

Novelle oder Roman ? (1876), by Friedrich Spielhagen (in 
Beitrige zur Theorie und Technik des Romans, Leipzig, 1883). 

Uber die amerikanische Romandichtung der Gegenwart 
(1886), by Anton E. Pred dna igaea (in Gesammelte Aufsatze, 
Graz, 1900). 

The Local Short Story, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson 
(Ndependent, New York, March 11, 1892). 

The Rise of the Short Story, by Bret Harte oeeiayaey 
Magazine, July, 1899). 

Short Story Writing, by Charles Raymond Barrett (New 
York, 1900). 

The Philosophy of the Short-story, by Brander Matthews 
(New York, 1go1). “So far as the author is aware,” says 
Mr. Matthews, “he had no predecessor in asserting (in 1884) 
that the Short-story differs from the Novel essentially, — and 
not merely in the matter of length ” (Appendix). 

The World’s Greatest Short Stories, by Sherwin Cody 
(Chicago, 1902). 

[45] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


A Study of Prose Fiction, by Bliss Perry (Boston, 1902). 
Chapter XII is devoted to the short story. 

The Writing of the Short Story, by Lewis Worthington 
Smith (Boston, 1902). 

The Book of the Short Story, edited by Alexander Jessup 
and Henry Seidel Canby (New York, 1903). 

American Short Stories, by Charles Sears Baldwin (New 
York, 1904). The Introduction contains thirty-five pages. 

The Short-story : Specimens illustrating its Development, 
by Brander Matthews (New York, 1907). The Introduction 
contains thirty-four pages. * 

The Best American Tales, by W. P. Trent and John Bell™ 
Henneman (New York, 1907). The Introduction contains 
seventeen pages. 

The Short-Story, by Evelyn May Albright (New York, 1907). 

The Short Story in English, by Henry Seidel Canby (New 
York, 1909). 

Writing the Short-Story, by J. Berg Esenwein (New York, 
1909). 

The Art of the Short Story, by George W. Gerwig (Akan, 
Ohio, 1909). 

The Great English Short Story Writers, by William J. 
Dawson and Coningsby W. Dawson (2 vols., New York, 1910). 
The Introduction, ‘‘ The Evolution of the Short Story,” contains 
twenty-nine pages. 

Bibliographies are given by Albright, Baldwin, Canby, 
Esenwein, Matthews (Zhe Philosophy of the Short-story), 
and Perry. 





[ 46 ] 


THEMES FOR INVESTIGATION 


1. The Technique of the American Short Story as ex- 
pounded by the Writers Themselves.* 


2. Dialect in Bret Harte’s Short Stories.? 


3. A Comparison of the Short Stories of Tieck and 
Hawthorne. ® 


4. Hidden Treasure as a Motif of the American Short 


Story.* 


1 In addition to the references already given, see Sidney L. 
Whitcomb’s Zhe Study of a Novel (New York, 1908), pp. 301-302. 

2H. C. Merwin, who is writing the life of Bret Harte for the 
American Men of Letters Series, informs me that he will devote 
several pages to this subject. 

8 See Poe’s Criticism of Hawthorne (Virginia Edition, Vol. 
XIII, pp. 144-145); Lowell’s Fable for Critics ; Schonbach’s 
Gesammelte Aufsitze, S. 345; H. M. Belden’s Poe’s Criticism of 
Hawthorne (Anglia, Vol. XI, pp. 376-404) ; Jessup and Canby’s 
Book of the Short Story (Introduction, pp. 10-12); Canby’s Zhe 
Short Story in English, pp. 247-248. 

* See Irving’s Dolph Heyliger (in Bracebridge Hail) and The 
Money-Diggers (Part IV of The Tales of a Traveller); Hawthorne’s 
Peter Goldthwaite’s Treasure (in Twice-Told Tales); Poe’s Gold 
Bug ; Mark Twain’s 7om Sawyer (chap. xxv seq.). 


[ 47] 


Are at 
Cy Gr a 


4 


No “Pie AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


5. Double Personality as a Motif of the American Short 
Story. 


6. Poe’s Contribution to the Technique of the Short Story. 


7. National Characteristics in the American Short Story. 


1 See Poe’s William Wilson ; Hoffmann’s Elixiere des Teufels 
and Poe’s William Wilson (chap. iv of Palmer Cobb’s 7he /nflu~ 
ence of EL. T. A. Hoffmann on the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, 1908) ; 
Hawthorne’s /Yowe’s Masquerade; Mark Twain’s Zhe Recent 
Carnival of Crime in Connecticut ; T. B. Aldrich’s Queen of Sheba ; 
‘ Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore’s Zhe Doppelginger (Library of 
Southern Literature, Vol. XIII, pp. 5777-5782) ; J. E. Poritzky’s 
Edgar Poe (Aus fremden Zungen, Berlin, 1908, pp. 189-190). 


[ 48] 


INDEX 


Addison, Joseph, 15 
Albright, Evelyn May, 46 
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 48 


Baldwin, Charles Sears, 46 
Baldwin, Joseph Glover, 33 
Barrett, Charles Raymond, 45 
Belden, Henry Marvin, 47 
Browning, Robert, 42 
Bulwer, Edward, 39 


Canby, Henry Seidel, 46, 47 

Clemens, Samuel Langhorne, 
31, 36, 47, 48 

Cobb, Palmer, 48 

Cody, Sherwin, 45 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 30 

Crawford, Marion, 42 

Cross, Wilbur L., 15 


Dawson, Coningsby W., 46 
Dawson, William J., 39, 46 
Dickens, Charles, 28, 39 
Doyle, Conan, 23 


Eliot, George, 39 
Esenwein, J. Berg, 46 


Fielding, Henry, 15 

Fontane, Theodor, 5 

Freeman, Mrs. Charles M. See 
Wilkins, Mary E. 


Gerwig, George W., 46 
Godwin, William, 19 


Hale, Edward Everett, 24,26, 29 
Handschin, Charles H., 8 
Harben, Will N., 33 
Harrison, James Albert, 45 
Harte, Francis Bret, 12, 24, 
27, 32, 45, 47 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 10, 12, 
16, 17, 18, 19-20, 21, 24, 26, 
27, 36, 45, 47, 48 
Henneman, John Bell, 46 
Higginson, Thomas Went- 
worth, 33, 45 ‘ 
Hoffmann, E. T. A., 19, 48 
Hooper, Johnson Jones, 33 
Howells, William Dean, 33-34 


Irving, Pierre M., 45 
Irving, Washington, 12, 14, 15, 
16, 28, 45, 47 


[49 ] 


THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY 


Jacobs, 40 

James, Henry, 26-27 

Jessup, Alexander, 46, 47 
Jewett, Sarah Orne, 34-35, 36 


Kellner, Leon, 23 
Kipling, Rudyard, 40 


Lamb, Charles, 43 


Lentner, 5 

Longfellow, Henry Wads- 
worth, 28 

Longstreet, Augustus Baldwin, 
33 


Lowell, James Russell, 47 


Mark Twain. See Clemens, 
Samuel Langhorne 

Matthews, Brander, 4, 7, 9, 25, 
45, 46 

Maupassant, Guy de, 25 

Merwin, Henry Childs, 47 

Meyer, F., 14 


Neubert, 6 


O’Brien, Fitz-James, 24-25 
O. Henry. See Porter, William 
Sidney 


Perry, Bliss, 46 

Poe, Edgar Allan, 6, 7, 9-11, 12, 
13, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 
25, 26, 28, 30, 32,43, 45» 47, 48 


Poritzky, J. E., 48 
Porter, William Sidney, 34, 
36 


Richardson, Samuel, 15 
Rohde, Edwin, 6 
Rosegger, Peter, 5 


Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 43 

Schénbach, Anton E., 5-6, 41, 
45) 47 

Shakespeare, 43 

Solger, K. W. F., 8 

Smith, Lewis Worthington, 46 

Spielhagen, Friedrich, 8-9, 42, 
45 

Stanton, Theodore, 3 

Steele, Richard, 15 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 40 

Stifter, Adalbert, 5 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 36 


Thackeray, William Make- 


peace, 39 
Thompson, William Tappan, 33 
Tieck, Ludwig, 47 
Trent, William Peterfield, 46 
Trollope, Anthony, 7 


Wetmore, Mrs. Elizabeth Bis- 
land, 48 

Whitcomb, Sidney L., 47 

Wilkins, Mary E., 34, 35 

Wiilker, Richard, 40 


[5°] 


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